Custard Schmustard - Klutz in the Kitchen II
May 7th 2009 05:23
As I placed the vegetable slice I made for last night’s dinner in the oven, delighting in my own legend status, I began to ponder what I’d do with the three leftover egg yolks I had as a result of making it. The slice recipe calls for two whole eggs and three egg whites, and I really didn’t want to waste the yolks, given these trying economic times, so I began tossing ideas around in my mind. I could easily make the cardiology specialist’s mayonnaise, (what with three egg yolks isn’t going to be the cardiologist’s special?!) but the family was not eating an accompanying salad, so why make the effort? Instead my sense of ‘adventure’ conquered me and I decided on egg custard. It’s only adventurous because I’d never made it before, and I only fancied it because we were having stewed apples for dessert and I thought custard would dress it up nicely. So I set out to find a decent custard recipe, and although I didn’t have the exact quantities, nor a vanilla pod handy, I did have enough milk, castor sugar, some vanilla essence and the egg yolks, so I figured I could just wing it. So I creamed the sugar and egg yolks together and felt that was fluffed up well enough, so on to heating the milk. Apparently you can make custard with half milk and half cream, or just all milk. I decided on half low-fat milk and half full-cream milk – perhaps the first step towards deflating my buoyant ego. Things were progressing well, I heated the milk up and poured that into the egg yolk mixture and began stirring. I then had to place the whole mixture back into the saucepan and under the flame where, with a little (constant) stirring, the mixture would thicken and then turn bland stewed apples into the most exquisitely warming, silky autumn dessert ever. The mixture obediently began to thicken for long enough to lull me into a false sense of security, but just as I became complacent and decided the heat should go up under the saucepan to speed things along, I had vanilla-flavoured scrambled eggs. I sieved this ridiculous concoction in the vain hope that I might end up with a smooth mixture – it ended in the bin, along with my flagging legend status.
So now I ponder what went wrong – could there have been a little white in my egg yolks? Remotely possible, but I was pretty careful when I separated them. Did the saucepan have a heavy enough base to take the heat? I have an idea the answer may be no, but I can’t be sure. Should have I used full-cream everything to make this to lower the possibility of curdling the mixture? Yes and cardiologists everywhere would be thanking me, no doubt.
In the meantime I’m looking for a decent counsellor (or a good cook / chef would do) to help me recover from my trauma. I will be trying again over the next couple of days to make custard as I refuse to allow a few stupid egg yolks and a dodgy saucepan to leave egg bits on my face! I’ll have to let you know what happens…….
So now I ponder what went wrong – could there have been a little white in my egg yolks? Remotely possible, but I was pretty careful when I separated them. Did the saucepan have a heavy enough base to take the heat? I have an idea the answer may be no, but I can’t be sure. Should have I used full-cream everything to make this to lower the possibility of curdling the mixture? Yes and cardiologists everywhere would be thanking me, no doubt.
In the meantime I’m looking for a decent counsellor (or a good cook / chef would do) to help me recover from my trauma. I will be trying again over the next couple of days to make custard as I refuse to allow a few stupid egg yolks and a dodgy saucepan to leave egg bits on my face! I’ll have to let you know what happens…….
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